Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute
A prominent supporter of this viewpoint has been Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a political organization that seeks to end abortion through the electoral process.
Scholars, especially Ann Dexter Gordon, have disagreed strongly, saying that Anthony showed little interest in the issue of abortion and never expressed opposition to it.
[11] Gordon said the belief that Anthony opposed abortion was "far-fetched",[5] describing it as "what historians call an 'invented memory'—history without foundation in the evidence but with modern utility".
[14] A 2006 article by Allison Stevens for Women's eNews said "a scholarly disagreement ...is growing into a heated skirmish over the famous suffragist's position on reproductive rights.
"[15] Stevens said pro-choice activists were "outraged over what they say is an unproven claim and concerned that their heroine is being appropriated by a community led by the very people Anthony battled during her lifetime: social conservatives".
[10][15] Gordon said that, for Anthony, the issue of abortion was "a political hot potato", one to avoid; it distracted from her main goal of gaining women the vote.
"[20] She quoted Annette Ravinsky, a former vice president of the FFL, as saying in published comments, "I really wish my former colleagues would stop twisting the words of dead people to make them mean something they don't ...
"[13] In response to this, journalist Lynn Sherr, author of Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words, joined with Gordon to write an opinion piece for The Washington Post.
"[13] SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser published her response to Sherr and Gordon, saying that their conclusion "that abortion was nowhere on [Anthony's] radar" was "unfounded on many levels".
[23] As a result, he said, "women believed themselves to be carrying inert non-beings prior to quickening",[24] and if a woman missed her period, an early sign of pregnancy, either she or her doctor could take steps to "restore menstrual flow".
Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed.
and concluded that in all cases their contents do not match Anthony's known beliefs or interests, including two that deal with a technical point of machinery and one that challenged the competence of the U.S. Patent Office.
[5] Ward emphasized this point by quoting The Revolution's editorial policy on this matter: "[T]hose who write for our columns are responsible only for what appears under their own names.
Frances Willard, president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, gave a speech on October 4, 1888, in which she described a conversation that included Anthony's reaction to a "leading publicist" who asked her why she, with such a generous heart, had never been a wife or mother.
Willard said that Anthony replied "after this fashion":[39] I thank you kind sir, for what I take to be the highest compliment, but sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.
[1] Ward similarly said that Anthony was referring not to abortion here but to laws that enabled the father to "will away" the children of the family to someone other than their mother after his death.
Ward supported this with a quote from Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of Anthony's co-workers, who criticized existing laws by which, "the father is assumed to be the sole owner of the children, who can be bound out, willed or given away without the consent or even the knowledge of the mother.
After naming alcohol abuse as a major social evil and estimating that there were 600,000 American men who were drunkards, Anthony said that the liquor traffic must be fought with "one earnest, energetic, persistent force".
[43] She continued with a sentence that mentioned abortion: The prosecutions on our courts for breach of promise, divorce, adultery, bigamy, seduction, rape; the newspaper reports every day of every year of scandals and outrages, of wife murders and paramour shooting, of abortions and infanticides, are perpetual reminders of men's incapacity to cope successfully with this monster evil of society.
They, alone, decide who are guilty of violating these laws and what shall be their punishment, with judge, jury and advocate all men, with no woman's voice heard in our courts.
[19] She said that "this speech clearly represents abortion as a symptom of the problems faced by women, especially when subjected 'to the tyranny of men's appetites and passions.
"[31] Ward said that Anthony also included divorce in that list of consequences and yet later in the speech "spoke caustically of those who opposed it, saying, 'We have had quite enough of the sickly sentimentalism which counts the woman a heroine and a saint for remaining the wife of a drunken, immoral husband.
Moreover, Gordon and Sherr wrote, there is no indication in the quote that Anthony considered abortion a social or political issue rather than a personal one, that she passionately hated it, or that she was active against it.
[31] In 2016 Dannenfelser wrote an article called "'Active Antagonism' on International Women's Day" that was published in The Hill, a political newspaper and website.
In it, she wrote, "Susan B. Anthony, the founding mother of the movement for women's rights, said that abortion filled her with 'indignation, and awakened active antagonism.
"[31] The full quotation from Blackwell, who was the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, reads: "The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism.
"[47] In August 2006, Carol Crossed, an anti-abortion feminist and advisory board member of the SBA List, purchased the house in Adams, Massachusetts, where Anthony was born.
According to the local reporter, the display implies that the rejection of advertisements frames Anthony's personal views about abortion, though she "never specifically states her position".
"[49] On January 14, 2017, Saturday Night Live broadcast a skit in which Susan B. Anthony, portrayed by Kate McKinnon, says "Abortion is murder!
"[53] On February 15, 2018, the White House under President Donald Trump issued a Susan B. Anthony Day proclamation, claiming that she was anti-abortion.
